


Only When You Hit The Ground

by formerlydf



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Gen, No spoilers for The Avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 02:24:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/pseuds/formerlydf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Daddy issues,” they whisper, like that explains everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only When You Hit The Ground

It’s the falling that hurts, the falling, the falling, cold breaths of choking air and ice crystals forming in his lungs until he breaks the atmosphere below Asgard and the wind begins to spark magic against his skin in rainbow flares, harsh and then hotter like he is flint and tinder both, scraped and chipped until the fire comes

magic hurts. Thor never understood that. Thor understood cuts and bruises and blood, always blood. Loki didn’t, Loki never did, and Odin isn’t proud—

He is ice. He is ice. The furious sparks eat away at his skin in a multi-colored swarm and then there’s just blue and flame and he can’t do anything, can’t use his magic, stripped bare and with too much momentum to do anything but fall.

There are stars.

He falls between branches and the tree is so big that he still cannot see all of it: even adrift, he is still blinded. Even Loki, he never saw the big picture. Odin is not proud.

Twigs the size of palaces lash at him, breaking that wide expanse of blue but slowing him down, at least, and he spreads out his arms and legs and skin and thinks, _insubstantial_. Thinks, _I am nothing._. Thinks, _I would not have let go if I didn’t know I could survive—_

Probably not, at least.

Slower now, buffeted, hair blowing behind him in the breeze made by the swaying of thousands of leaves that are galaxies but slow is relative, really. Space has no gravity but he’s farther than that now, beyond space, and Yggdrasil has her own rules.

The taste of lightning, the taste of home, and he grabs on before he thinks — snatches only to have it crumble between fingers he cannot feel. But even a liar has anchors of magic and hooks and it’s only a remnant, that’s all, the dissipating smoke of the Bifrost left behind from recent visits, and perhaps Thor will be stuck forever but for Loki it’s a path, it’s a path

he breaks atmosphere from the other direction this time.

_if I did not know_

and the air tears and the air burns and then it’s landing that hurts the most — landing that leaves him raw, shredded and bruised and bleeding and covered in sand. It’s the landing that hurts, not everything else.

-

but he can do anything.

-

The world shakes. Far away in Malibu, Tony Stark peels himself off the sofa and calls out, “Jarvis!” in his hangover voice. He tries, at least. It takes him two attempts to work up the necessary amount of spit.

“You’re in fine condition this morning, sir,” Jarvis says out of the speaker in the corner, and the first thing Tony did when he bought the house was surround sound the shit out of the place. A home for Jarvis in between the walls.

“That hurts, Jarvis, it really does.”

he spent more time rebuilding the place than he ever spent on the paperwork to buy it in the first place and it was all worth it to be able to call out and always have someone else there — worth the plaster in his hair and the scorches from the wires and all the time spent programming in the first place, coding and debugging and talking to himself and recoding until he typed in a line of symbols one day and a voice said back, _If I may, sir, I believe that it would be more effective if we—_

“I apologize, sir.” No remorse. Tony likes that in most people. “There is coffee in the kitchen.”

(he grew up in a lot of empty rooms.)

Tony’s shoulder hits the rug first, and then the rest of him.

-

but he can do anything. He made the monsters, didn’t he?

-

He haunted libraries as a child, hiding from the mysteries of love in the secrets of the universe, all of the words that had ever been written and forgotten. Books from long-dead authors on long-conquered worlds: do they know now what they gave up, for the benevolent overrule of the Aesir? Do they know that the wisdom of their ancestors lingers on shelves where no one ever looked but Loki?

“Oh, Loki,” his mother said. “My Loki,” his mother said, “I will look up one day and your skin will be parchment and your hair will be ink.”

words. Words lie, often, but truth clings to lies like oil on skin, messy and slippery and just as hard to see as it is to get rid of. (But no one writes on blue parchment, do they?)

And anyway he’s smarter than everyone else and that comes with a price, always: comes with you understanding books better than people understand you, comes with a life spent reading and practicing and creating because that’s how you get the satisfaction of getting things right. The satisfaction of _knowing_.

He made Fenrir and Jormungard and Sleipnir and Hel: he saw their exile, as he fell past Yggdrasil.

-

There’s always something else to conquer, isn’t there? There’s always something else. There’s always something more. There’s always something besides the hot sound of silence and the way it aches like

screams like

There’s always something more to do if you’re not afraid of scars.

-

Tony Stark joins the Avengers. It is, he thinks, against Fury’s better judgement. It is, in fact, against Tony’s better judgement, but Tony does a lot of things that are against his better judgement, purely to say he did them.

That’s a lie. Tony Stark has no better judgement. He does have Pepper, though.

But yeah, fuck it, fine, let’s go save the world, that sounds like a great idea, maybe while we’re out there we can go rescue a few kittens from trees—

but that’s hypocrisy, anyway. Yes, Captain America. Yes, Tony went on a one-man iron crusade with a work-in-progress suit to try to wipe out terrorism, yes, Tony says a lot of things and then does a lot of completely different things, yes, yes, yes. But Tony never thought that he could save the world; he just wondered if maybe he could change it, if he changed himself first.

That’s a lie. Tony Stark doesn’t change.

-

“Daddy issues,” they whisper, like that explains everything.

-

Here is this world that his brother loves:

Here is this world that made his brother better, that took a stubborn, foolish, spoiled god-prince and made him better, made him worthy, somehow, some strange mortal magic doing the unthinkable, because Loki wanted to point out the problem but he never entirely believed it could be fixed.

the hammer never moves, no matter how he tugs, and Thor is, has always been, arrogant and headstrong and oblivious and too eager for a fight and he never _thinks_

(affable and chivalrous and friendly and kind and good)

Here is this world that turned a prince into a king, turned a warrior into a leader, impossible transmutations Loki could never find in any library and oh, by Odin’s blood: didn’t he try? and Thor, blood of Odin, by Odin’s blood: couldn’t Thor just have stayed there? if he loves it so much couldn’t he just have stayed on this dusty, _useless_ planet with a useless hammer and all these useless people? couldn’t one of Loki’s plans just have turned out the way it was supposed to?

turned a brother into an only child —

Here is this world. Here is this world and isn’t it just so ripe for the taking?

-

scream and yell and cry and wait and try to speak reason and hold a sharp blade and press it to someone’s throat and draw blood and wait and talk and hit and talk louder and louder and wait and try and wait and wait and wait but in the end, empires are the best way to get people’s attention.

-

He learned to crack magnetic locks first — the simple ones, the ones on his door and his mom’s and a few of his dad’s lesser offices, the ones where all he had to do was selectively turn off the power and they would swing right open. Fail-safes. Crude, but he was a little kid back then and anyway, Tony doesn’t always see the point in subtlety when he can blow things up instead. Why waste time fishing when you can throw a stick of dynamite in the lake?

Or something. He’s paraphrasing; Rhodey said something like that once, but actually, he might have been telling Tony _not_ to start blowing things up. Huh.

every year—

—but Tony’s dad wasn’t stupid, anyway, and for someone so personally and professionally public, he always had surprising wells of secrets, private rooms where not even the housekeepers could go to clean. The interesting places, basically. Cut the power to the door and suddenly an extra bolt slammed into place. Tony turned eight on the day he cracked one of those for the first time.

Well, no, actually, that was three weeks after; the day he turned eight he was at a different house entirely, avoiding his babysitters and trying to figure out where his parents hid his presents and working on Dummy 1.0. The birthday thing makes for a better story, though, and who doesn’t appreciate those in the Stark household?

(he learns spin from the headlines, perspective, the way reporters can write down every detail of a life but still only see STARK DEBUTS NEW TECH IN OSLO, LONDON, TOKYO instead of STARK GONE AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN, can fact-check so obsessively and still somehow avoid the truth: numbers are easy but words are a lesson in themselves, words and all their possibilities, words and all the ways they let people distract themselves)

one week, every year: the papers never mention it, which is as close to sacred as anything gets in the Stark household. Tony’s mom just says, “He’s doing something very important, sweetie, he’ll be back soon,” and Obie makes very quiet comments that he never repeats at any other time about how he supports Howard, he always supports Howard, god knows it’s a noble cause, but the cost—

the door swings open, eventually.

Howard Stark spends one week out of every year on a boat in the middle of the ocean. One week, every year, and Tony picks the best lock in the house and walks into his father’s most private study and watches film reels about heroes and stops counting his father as one of them, at some point.

-

Because doesn’t it seem like his father will live forever? Because doesn’t it seem like his father will outlive him?

-

“Oh, Loki,” and there was always that condescending catch to their sympathetic voices, everybody who ever imagined they cared about him: _oh Loki_ because didn’t he know already? Didn’t he recognize that he was the spare? Did he never realize that he should just stop trying?

but Thor was gone and Odin was asleep and Loki thought, _yes, now, this_. Thought himself clever, because he has not gotten so far in life, in Asgard, without learning when to take his opportunities, when to fight and when to steal and when to run.

-

living large, living legend, living legacy: the movies say, “He lives in you,” but he lives on you, doesn’t he, lives around you, that shadow sucked in with your every breath, the specter summoned by your every footstep, the name you drag in the dirt behind you that somehow always reaches your destination five minutes before you do:

is you, loves you, leaves you, lies to you, will outlive you

-

“Tony,” Obie says, “we should do something with that house,” Obie says, “you can’t just ignore it,” Obie says, “the master codes to the locks were in the will,” Obie says, “I need them,” Obie says.

“Tony,” Obie says, puzzled, “these codes are all out of date,” and Tony is grease-stained and unsurprised and seventeen and doesn’t care, doesn’t care, doesn’t care that his father never bothered to imagine this possibility, and his parents are dead.

his car wrapped around a telephone pole last year: the police report said DUI and the hospital records said he was in a coma for three days and his mother said, “Oh, Tony, _Tony_ ,” with lost red eyes.

(the codes were out of date but the will said _All the rest, residue, and remainder of my estate I give to_ )

Tony keeps the doors in the New York mansion locked, because nothing’s ever as much fun when you have permission, is it?

-

“Daddy issues,” they whisper, like he would admit that explains anything at all.

-

—our father—

And yes, he is, isn’t he? Allfather, all’s father, and everybody is an Odinson but Loki. Or there is only one Odinson, but it isn’t Loki, never Loki, Loki no one’s son.

(some part of him was never surprised, to peel away his skin and find blue underneath)

Thor calls him _brother_ and Loki laughs, feels history grind underneath his heart, rusting gears of sentiment and sharp-edged wheels of memory: he made the monsters and Thor seeks kinship, just because they were raised together. Just because they spent millennia back to back instead of at each other’s throats, just because Thor spent three straight summers throwing Loki in the river until Loki learned to twist away at the last minute and send Thor blundering into the water, just because Loki had convinced Thor to wear women’s garb on four separate occasions, just because they have discovered worlds together—

but that’s Thor, isn’t it, who has grown up expecting others to follow him, who fights with a hammer that returns to his side when he calls for it and who has no use for those who resist his beckoning hand.

(affable and chivalrous and friendly and kind and good)

But he can give them command if that is what they want, what they respect, what they hope for when they look at him and are disappointed by seeing someone who is not Thor. He threatened to bring peace and the Bifrost was destroyed; he can bring war, if that is what they prefer.

-

And isn’t it handy, always having that measuring stick drifting by your side?

-

Ask Tony who his favorite comic book superhero is and he’ll say Batman, obviously, will say, “Something about the idea of a genius billionaire who fights crime with a bunch of cool toys just seems really appealing, for some reason,” and the smirk is never lurking far away.

(The tabloids know everything about Tony Stark except how often he lies.)

but he decided a long time ago what he could and couldn’t live up to, anyway, and high-tech genius crime-fighting orphaned billionaire with an awesome butler always seemed more approachable than anything else. Seemed possible, because never let it be said that Tony doesn’t know his limits.

Hasn’t learned his limits, at least, after seventeen years of film reels, the way his father looked for blond ghosts everywhere but all the places where Tony was screwing up.

because Tony lies all the time and he had piles of Superman comics underneath his bed, growing up, all truth and justice and the American way. (the world’s truest soldier) Isn’t it amazing, the people who have never had a problem being good?

-

“I am worthwhile,” he says, because words are weapons, even when the target is himself.

-

home is just another shackle, in any case, an empty dream inside a cage of other people’s expectations, and he does not miss it: cannot miss what he now knows he never had. Is better off without it.

“oh, Loki,” his mother said, “my Loki—”

Earth and then Asgard, and his _brother_ will learn how it feels, as they burn; Loki will regret nothing, because there is nothing to regret. There is no one. Not his mother not

Sif has been kind, Sif has always been _kind_ , and Loki knows what it means, that the only people he has ever been able to call friends belonged to his brother, first and foremost. And Loki, Loki Liesmith, Trickster, Silvertongue, little brother weakling coward tagalong last one chosen Loki — Loki is many things, but he refuses to be pitied.

There is no room for regret in vengeance; there is no room for pity in triumph.

-

because oh, hasn’t he always been on a quest to make other people hate him more than he hates himself?

-

Tony falls off the sofa in New York and wakes to the friends he built and the friends he pays and the Avengers, somehow, and thinks, _Okay, fine, time to cause mass amounts of property damage while saving the world_ —

It’s principle or atonement or something, anyway, and he’s never bothered figuring it out but he wakes five nights out of seven because in his dreams he’s building a metal man in a cave

(metal hot against his skin, peeling off in sharp strips with every slice of wind, clouds turning to sand in front of his narrow rectangle of vision, and he thinks that it would still have been worth it even if he hadn’t survived in the end)

 _Fuck it,_ he thinks, _let’s save some kittens._

The dreams of the cave aren’t as bad as the other ones, anyway.

-

the air tears and the air burns and his solid ground is gone, has been gone, all of those cracks he never let himself see and it has never been the landing that hurts the most.

There’s too much time for contemplation when the universe is tumbling around your ears, and it aches like landing but it screams like falling, like falling, like falling—

But it took barely a breath for the world to tilt beneath his feet (brother, son, murderer) and then what else was there to do but let himself drop?


End file.
